


Blooming Boy (Waterparks Oneshots)

by awstensnewwave



Category: Awsten Knight - Fandom, Geoff Wigington - Fandom, Otto Wood - Fandom, Waterparks (Band)
Genre: Chronic Illness, Fluffy, Kinky, M/M, Multi, Smut, multi-chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 22:39:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18508516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awstensnewwave/pseuds/awstensnewwave
Summary: ~ Chronic Illness can destroy your life, especially when you're an artist and album deadlines are an ever present thing ~





	Blooming Boy (Waterparks Oneshots)

**Author's Note:**

> ! CHAPTER ONE !

A/N; before people get mad, this is just me venting my own experiences. 

____

He already knew that this was going to be the most awkward interview of his entire life. 

The first of many, as a matter of fact.

Ever since their third album, 'Friendly Reminder' had to be delayed for two weeks because of him getting rushed into emergency surgery, Awsten knew that the large majority of interviews for the next _however-many-weeks_ were going to be about exactly that.

Surgery.

How and why he didn't talk about the chronic illness that forced him into having surgery.

How he felt about having that illness.

Stupid shit like that.

Well, he knew that this wasn't stupid. He knew that talking about all of _this_ would make things, in the long run, easier to talk and deal with. He knew that talking about it would stop him having to avoid questions for the rest of his, well, life. Of course he was going to have to talk about it. There was no denying that, he wasn't a complete dumb-ass, he knew that there was going to be times where he would have to talk about it.  But despite all of that, he was still terrified.

His wrist had been rubbed raw from the constant snapping of his hair-band. Not bleeding-raw, but it was still...Sore. He sighed under his breath, rubbing his fingers along his reddened skin. Originally, he wanted to wear a long sleeved shirt, cover it all up, but all of his long sleeved shirts seemed to fall at an awkward angle due to the intense amounts of weight that he had lost throughout his recovery, and that only made him feel even more insecure about his whole appearance. His shorter sleeved shirts didn't fit that much better, but at least he could be able to hold stuff without the cuff of his sleeve getting in the way. 

But fuck, he had lost a lot of weight. And it was noticeable. 

He was a slim guy to begin with, so losing nearly ten pounds in the span of a month made him look sick. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes were sunken into his sockets, and his collarbones looked like they were fighting to break free of his skin. It wasn't a good look for him. Yet eating anything more than a thousand, five hundred calories a day made his sensitive gut react horrendously - it was common for him to be huddled over a toilet in a public bathroom, being careful not to let his knees touch the piss-soaked floor, vomiting up bile and undigested food into the bowl, before shakily cleaning himself up and going back to hanging out with his friends, acting as if nothing was wrong. 

*

Within the first week of moving to LA, he got ill. Whenever it was the new food that he was exposed to, the face that the air seemed to be dirtier, or the whole stress of moving to an entirely new state, something had gotten him _sick._ After what seemed to be a normal night-in of eating food that he would commonly eat at home, his stomach started cramping up. In Awsten's mind, while he knew that this was yet another flare up, he wanted to avoid thinking about it. So he just stopped eating the food, drank a half gallon of water, and tried to concentrate on whatever trash was playing on the TV. Yet the consistent cramping, the overwhelming nausea, plus the migraine that had started to leak into his brain was quickly starting to become overwhelming. 

Twenty minutes passed. Twenty minutes of pure and utter agony passed. In the end, a sharp sting to his right side was what made Awsten run into the bathroom. Yeah. It wasn't pretty. There was even more pain, the feeling of blood loss, more cramps.  There was also vomiting, at some point.  He didn’t know when. But he just knew that he had thrown up at some point during the night. Not on himself, thank fuck, but the toilet seat was left up and there was the all too familiar sensation of burning bile coating every crevasse within his throat. His forehead and shirt was covered in sweat and he couldn’t seem to get rid of the shaking that had spread throughout his entire body. His knees had been bruised from the constantly rotation of sitting on the toilet, and the kneeling down in front of it. 

Turns out, instead of him being so _violently_ unwell spanned for a long, long time. Going to register at your local doctors surgery and having to go straight in and explain... _Everything_ that was going on was something that he really didn’t wanna have to be doing. 

Medication calmed things down. For a while, at least. He was kinda glad that he had been put on medication right away, but his doctor must've sensed just how unwell Awsten was. 

*

"Aws." Lucas gently nudged his shoulder. "You okay?" Yeah, no, he wasn't. See, when you have major surgery on your abdomen area, especially open surgery, your internal core muscles...Just fuck off and don't do what they're meant to do. Standing for more than thirty minutes made Awsten want to pass out from pure exhaustion, and considering the fact that they had been standing outside of the radio/interviewing station for the past twenty minutes was only further proving that. His legs started to feel wobbly, and combined with the fact that they were on flat, pale grey concrete and a blasting hot, cloudless sky, didn't really help that. "Sit. C'mon, on the ground, c'mon." 

"I feel so fuckin' sick, Lucas." Awsten mumbled. "I just wanna go home." 

Oh fuck...There was also the fact that he was going to have to walk half a mile back to where the car was, as well. 

That only filled him with even more dread.

He really was beginning to regret not bringing his cane. 

"Here. Drink." Lucas said, handing him a bottle of water. "C'mon, Aws. You need it. Drink it." 

Water, in all aspects of things, was a relatively safe thing to drink. He didn't get sick from it and it didn't make him throw up - and his body needed more water, considering he found himself getting more dehydrated than normal from doing simple, everyday tasks. So he was kinda glad that Lucas always kept a few bottles on him. 

"My stomach fucking kills." He mumbled. It was the fucking truth. He could feel the cramps starting to pulsate through him. 

"It's gonna be okay, alright?" Lucas said. "Look, we  _ have _ to do this interview, we can't back out of it now, but after I'm gonna give you every right to just sleep in the backseat for the journey home." He chuckled slightly, but quickly went back to his strong-shelled, cast-iron exterior. Awsten did force out a gentle laugh himself, knowing that Lucas' joking around about serious matters always came across as slightly awkward, but in reality he kinda hoped he did live up to that offer. He was fucking worn out from simply  _ walking _ to this place, something which would normally be a breeze for him. So having to sit in a, most likely, stuffy, hot, and cramped room for the better part of ninety minutes, talk for the large majority of that time, not be able to take any sort of pain relief or even run to the bathrooms if need be, as well as make the journey back to the van...It was gonna be hell. 

Suddenly, the door leading into the actual broadcasting station opened. A youngish guy, with hair half dyed pink (the other side being his, presumably, natural, dark brown locks), stepped out. 

"Fuck, sorry I'm running behind, man." All of them, admittedly, were taken aback by his British-Northern accent. "You okay? There is a lift inside, if you need it, man. Oh! I'm Dom, by the way!"

"Thanks." He smiled softly. "Ah, fuck-" He hissed under his breath as he clambered back up to his feet. A sharp, shooting pain exploded down the centre of his abdomen, quickly travelling to the back of his legs. "Shit, damn, I'm okay-"

This was gonna be a long ass day.

***

"So. You've mentioned that this album came out later than expected. How come this was the case, then?"

Everybody already knew the answer. Well, more or less, at least. During the final recording stages of Friendly Reminder, right after they got off the tour with One Ok Rock, the deepest secret that Awsten had kept hidden away for over a decade decided to come back into existence again.

Talking about his Crohn's wasn't fun.

Fuck, dealing with Crohn's disease was fucking hell on Earth!

Constant cramping, the bloody, watery shit, the vomiting, bladder infections, along with low iron count and a total hatred of any 'out there' foods was something that Awsten felt deeply ashamed about. It was the last thing that he wanted to talk about with anybody! It took him a good few weeks before he could even register with a new doctor after he moved out to LA, as he knew full well that he was gonna have to speak to them about his disease. And yes, while they were doctors, and they wouldn't judge him in the slightest, there was still that initial moment of uttering his medical past. And that was the bit he dreaded the most.

So why he was talking about it to a radio interviewer, he had no idea.

Awsten sat back nervously, hand going straight to gentle pinging the black hairband on his wrist. In the corner of his eye he could see Geoff and Otto glancing over at him with twinkles of...something, some kind of negative emotion, in their eyes.

"Uh, I-I got really, really sick." He began. "I've always been kinda sick, never told anyone about it. There was this...This deep rooted sh-sha-a-me that I felt. When I was, like, twelve, I started...Uh-" Awsten could feel his face turn beet red. His shoulders tensed up, his knees started to bounce, and all he wanted to do was stand up and sprint out of the baking hot room he, and his bandmates, were currently trapped in. His throat closed up and he could've sworn the objects in the room were beginning to warp and drastically change shape. Fuck, and he could feel the starts of a migraine coming on. "I started shitting blood. Like, proper. Proper clots of blood. It really...It really wasn't all that fun, y'know."

It was out in the the open now.

The radio interviewer, Dom, actually didn't seem as freaked out as Awsten expected him to be. He simply sat there, nodding, genuinely, properly listening to the words that he was speaking. It was comforting, somewhat.

"I didn't tell my parents. I-I was twelve, I was too embarrassed to tell them anything about me! Even though there was literal  _ blood _ coming out of me, I just couldn't bring myself to mention it to them. There seemed no possible way to pull them aside, tell them about my _insufferable_ cramps, the constant vomiting, the agony that I was in, the-the blood, I just couldn't! Whenever I was experiencing a really bad episodes, called a flare up, I would..."

"Suffer in silence?" Dom spoke up.

"Suffer in silence." Awsten confirmed. "I would just say I didn't feel too well, avoid eating dinner, and sulk upstairs to alternate between whimpering under the covers and running to the bathroom to, uh... _ Eliminate _ ."

"But obviously they know now, right?" He asked. "About everything?"

"Oh, for sure! They found out when I was, like, fourteen or something? They...They, uh-" He glanced down at the ground.

His heart began pulsating like mad. It felt like it was rising out of his chest and up into his throat, cutting off his airway. Geoff gently touched his knee, a silent way of telling him to calm down. Awsten knew that he didn't have to talk about any of this, but ever since he got ill a few months back, he knew that he had to teach himself to be more open with people. He had to tell people what was going on. Keep them in the loop, and all that stuff.

"My Mom found me curled over in a bathroom one morning, sick as all hell, cause I was right in the middle of a flare-up. She was concerned, obviously, but she didn't think I was like, _severe_ -severe. A chronic illness definitely didn't come to her mind, she just thought I had the flu or something. She kept me off school for two days for me to recover.” Memories were flooding back to him. “But I kept on getting worse. And worse. And  _ worse _ . She got worried, but doctors kept on telling her that she was ' _ overreacting _ ', that ' _ I would be fine _ ', that I was just ' _ unlucky with my immune system _ ', but she is a Health teacher, y'see? She...She just knows when something isn't right, especially when it comes to wellness and whatever. So she took me straight to the ER. Good thing, really. I hadn't eaten in, like, ages. My blood levels were low, I had a fever of a hundred and five, I was shaking, the whole lot!" Just like earlier, he forced out a slight laugh. "She told them my symptoms. They ordered, uh, a-a colonoscopy...Uh, yeah. That...That wasn't a fun process." He shuddered at the memory. 

 

*

Logically, Awsten knew that there was no point in fighting back against his Mom’s words. She was his literal mother, and at the end of the day, he was going to have to do what she said. Yet the sheer idea of having to go into hospital, drink a disgusting substance that would make him shit his guts out for twenty four hours straight, and then be put to sleep for a few hours? That was fucking horrifying. 

If he hadn’t been completely incapacitated on the bathroom floor, then he might have glugged up the courage to cower away someplace where she couldn’t find him. Yet that wasn’t gonna happen. Obviously. 

He couldn’t stand up. Every single time he tried to rise up onto his feet, his legs would shake, his knees would hurt, and the entire room would spin at a million miles a minute. His stomach would lurch and, before he knew it, he would be hunched over the toilet again, hurling up any leftover acid into the white bowl.

His Mom knew that something was up. All the doctors appointments that they had made were going nowhere, and the only thing left to do was to take him to the ER. It was risky, considering the fact that Awsten had a lowkey fear of hospitals, but what else could she do? Awsten was wasting away before her eyes. Literally. His skin was becoming paler, yellowing almost, and that was only the least of her worries. His eyes were sunken, his ribs poked through his paper-thin skin, and there wasn’t any sort of recollection of the last time that he ate. Drank, even. 

After some minutes of gentle talk, Awsten was picked up, bridal-style, and carried out of the bathroom, out of the house, and placed across the back seats. The air outside was bitterly cold, despite it being only September. It was oddly soothing. His entire body felt like it was burning from the inside out that the icy cold air and hard, heavy drops of frozen rain seemed to numb the pain somewhat. 

That physical pain quickly returned once they pulled up to the doors of the ER, though. Instantly, Awsten started...Crying? And he didn’t even know why. The physical pain, cramping, the urge to vomit, stuff like that, was such a background sensation that he wasn’t really being affected by it anymore. Yet he already knew that he was going to the hospital, so he wasn’t crying out of fear, either. It was...It was more of exhaustion. He was crying out of pure and utter exhaustion. Frustration. Anger? He didn’t know. 

*

 

A simple, run-of-the-mill paragraph, screenshot on his phones note app that had been posted to his Twitter, alongside some hospitalised photos of himself was terrifying enough to post. Talking about it was so, so much worse. At least with Twitter, he could disconnect his WiFi, turn off his phone, and try to forget about everything for a couple of hours. In real life? This stuff was being recorded, it was going to be edited together, and then uploaded online! For thousands of people to see! It was going to be a constant reminder of...Everything that had happened.  The post on Twitter wasn't all that... _ personal. _ At least when compared to  _ this _ situation. 

On Twitter, he just explained that he had been living with Crohn's disease for nearly half his life and that he had been in hospital to get a chunk of his small intestine removed.

And now he was being interviewed about it.

In real life, you could see the emotions on his face. In real life, you could see...You could see the pain. The bouncing legs, the shaking lip, the darting eyes, the whole lot. 

"Then you were diagnosed. After that scan." Geoff said, letting a soft smile appear on his lips. "Otto and I never knew, y’know? We only found out when we were backstage, after the last OOR show. He had been kinda unwell for the last few days, but that's just tour life. You get ill. We thought it was just a viral thing, we gave him one of those face masks to make sure we didn't get sick, and we thought that'd be it." Geoff briefly glanced over to a, very visibly, uncomfortable Awsten, before continuing. "He ran straight to the bathroom when we got off stage, and we instantly heard him puking his guts out-"

"I knew there and then that I was having a flare up. I just...I just found myself laying on the floor, crying-" His eyes burned. His vision went fuzzy and he had to tilt his head up to look at the bright beaming, LED lights above his head to stop tears from spilling out. "I was crying. A lot. I vomited a lot. There was  _ blood  _ coming out of my nose because of how hard I was puking-" He was pretty certain that Geoff had placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, but he felt so detached from his body that he couldn't be sure. "After a while they, Geoff and Otto, came in. They busted the flimsy ass lock, took one look at me, and started firing questions."

"We thought it was some kind of food poisoning. We asked him what food he had been eating, we asked him all these questions, and all he could reply with was...Well, was with sobbing, more vomiting, and stomach cramps." Otto added on. 

"Anyways-" The interviewer continued. "So, what led you to getting hospitalised? Did Geoff and Otto take you?" Awsten began to nod silently, but quickly cut himself off.

"It was Lucas, our tour manager, who technically made the decision. He took one look at me and-" Awsten, for the first time since the dreadful, soul wrenching interview started, managed to let out a genuine chuckle. "He was all like 'Fuck this. Fuck what anybody thinks, I'm calling an ambulance!' and I'm so glad he did, y'know?." 

*

The door to the green-room bathroom was locked. Again. Geoff sat down with his back pressed up to it, lips clamped tightly shut, listening intently at the sounds that Awsten was making. For a few minutes, it was nothing but straight-up retching. There wasn’t the sound of vomit spilling out anywhere, just...Retching. Gagging. 

This was so much more than just a simple stomach-bug. So much -fucking- more. There were so many signs that just showed that Awsten’s sickness was...So much more. If it was just a stomach bug, then somebody else would’ve gotten it by now. Geoff would’ve been the first, most likely, considering his immune system was whack. Otto would’ve been showing symptoms, as well. Lucas? Probably not as much, none of the boys had seen him been sick during a tour before, but if this stomach bug was as violent as Awsten was making it out to be, then he would’ve definitely gotten a couple of symptoms by this rate. Lucas was the one who held Awsten’s hair back as he hurled up his guts, he was the one who convinced Awsten to get out of his bunk and take showers every morning. Lucas was the one who cleaned the puke off from Awsten’s shirt the other day, after he randomly threw up on himself when the tour-bus was getting filled up with gas. Yet Lucas? Right now? Was fine! Physically, fit and healthy, like always. 

There was also the fact that Awsten didn’t really have any other symptoms of a stomach bug. No runny noses, no watery eyes, no sneezing nor coughing. It just seemed to be stomach cramps, running off to the bathroom every fifteen minutes, and a lot of sleeping. Like, a lot of sleeping. 

A weak wail emitted from inside the bathroom. Geoff glanced over at Otto and Lucas, who had now joined him on either side, with concern covering his eyes. 

Should they call out? Ask Awsten if he was okay? 

Nobody really knew the answer to that. Another weird thing about this ‘stomach bug’ thing that Awsten claimed he had was the fact that he just...Didn’t wanna talk about it. Whenever it was brought up in conversation, his face would go red, he would roll his sleeves over his hands, and it was really fucking obvious that he just wanted to forget about it all. Not talk about it. Act as if he was perfectly okay. 

“Awsten.” Lucas spoke up. “Open up. Now. C’mon.” His voice was firm, but not harsh. He ushered for Geoff and Otto to go and relax on the couches, get away from the door, as he gently knocked on the locked wood. “Dude. Open.”

“No.” Awsten’s reply was weak. “I’m fine!”

“You’re not fucking fine. You’re vomiting, Awsten. Shitting, too. You haven’t eaten anything in days, not anything significant or calorie-rich anyways. I can’t remember the last time you actually drunk a full bottle of water without going to the bathroom two minutes later. You’re currently curled up on a bathroom floor, quite obviously fucking crying, and I’ve been listening to you throw up for the last twenty minutes now. Something is up-”

Bang. 

There was some sort of loud thud coming from the bathroom. 

And it didn’t sound good. 

*

He paused. 

It was time to get truthful. 

Properly truthful. 

"I-I don't like talking about this sorta stuff. It embarrasses me. I don't wanna discuss my literal shit in front of people. But-But it's my life, and I need to be honest. I have Crohn's Disease, and for the longest time I was...I was ashamed about it. I still am now, in a way, but I'm learning to overcome it. In a few years time I'm probably gonna need an Stoma. Like, one of those poop-bags? It's gonna suck ass, more albums will probably be delayed, but...-" 

"Your health comes first." And, just like Awsten, for the first time since this interview started, the interviewer seemed to have relaxed a little. "You had a major surgery, and at the end of the day, if an album gets delayed, it gets delayed! And besides, it was only by two weeks. That's not much at all, in retrospect."

"Thanks." Awsten smiled. "Left a pretty cool fuckin' scar though." He lifted up his shirt slightly, showing the six inch long, bright red and slightly scabby line that ran from the top of his belly button to halfway up his abdomen.

"I think it'd be cool thing to have a stoma bag, y'know." Geoff smirked. "Imagine. Somebody annoys you. Rip that bag off. Throw it at them!"

"Geoff!" Awsten blushed. "Shut the fuck up, I'm not gonna throw a potential bag of shit at people! But seriously...I hate talking about it. I dunno, it’s just a thing that I’ve felt like I’ve had to keep a secret for a long, long time, and now that I’m actually talking about it, out in the open? It’s a weird feeling...Weird ass feeling.” 

“It’s good that you are talking about it, though.” Dom smiled softly. “It gets the word out there! Like...Other people with Crohn's Disease, or other chronic illnesses, are gonna feel less alone if somebody _cool_ talks about their own experiences. Like Theresa May, for example. Type One diabetes. She talks about that. Yet...Nobody, nobody young at least, is gonna be like ‘Oh Theresa May has that! I feel less alone’. If you talk about living with your illness, Awsten, make it more normalised, especially ‘cause it relates to stuff that isn’t seen as socially ‘pretty’ or whatever, more people are gonna come forward to talk about their experiences. More people are gonna be like ‘hey, he’s cute. He’s cool, he talks about living with that disease, I feel less alone’. It may be awkward. It may be embarrassing to talk about your experiences, but doing so may make a couple of kids feel less alone.”

Awsten could’ve burst into tears right there and then. 

He was right. 

Growing up, he felt so...Alone. So victimised by everything. People would make fun of anything relating to his chronic illness, all because it involved ‘gross stuff’. 

Even when special arrangements were made for him, all with the full intention of making life much easier for him, it still caused him intense amounts of grief. For example, having one of those specialised bathroom passes that allowed him to use the bathroom whenever and wherever he wanted, without having to ask a teacher or anything, made him feel so fucking humiliated. There was only two times he used it, and those two times were hell on earth. The first time the supply teacher asked why he had a pass, and he had to explain to the entire class about his literal shit...He was bullied before. That really didn’t help. The second time, he didn’t even use it. He needed to go, but was so pent up with the past experience, that he just...Held everything in. 

Until he couldn’t anymore. 

Yup. He was still in class. 

It was his third week of High School. 

That was when the bullying began. 

He felt so fucking alone then. 

So. Fucking. Alone. 

If there was somebody that he knew that also shared similar experiences, he knew that he would’ve loved to speak to them about...Things. Or even just listen to there stories. Ever since he could remember, one of the few things he wanted was for somebody that he could relate to when it came to chronic illnesses. 

So the fact that somebody was suggesting that he could be  _ that something.  _ That…That person that a kid, or a teenager, or whoever, could look up to and relate to, and feel less alone in their struggles, was fucking heartwarming. 

“Yeah. Yeah.” He nodded, face now blooming with a full smile. “You’re right, huh? I could become like…”

“Advocate.” Geoff said. 

“An advocate. Fuck yes.”

....

lmao what even was this.

 

 


End file.
